The fast-paced and dynamic nature of social media can be dizzyingly unattainable for small nonprofits who often have only one full-time person to dedicate to the effort (if that). That's why we at Groundwork Digital are so impressed with the work being done by Jessica Poskozim, Development Director at Cathedral of Christ the King in Superior, Wisconsin.

Jessica has organically built a dependable base of online ambassadors who are a key component to Cathedral's video-based content marketing strategy. Check out the following video for the details on how Cathedral of Christ the King is enjoying social media success thanks to Jessica's work...

Happy holidays!

What a year it has been … Groundwork Digital launched in early 2017 and we are SO happy to be working with incredible nonprofit partners who support a wide array of causes across multiple continents.

From planning giving days and building online ambassador programs … to innovative new concepts around digital major GIFTS campaigns and multi-channel strategies that elevate direct mail, email, and social media fundraising all at the same time.

We are grateful this season for the brilliant partners who we call our clients and can’t wait to discover what 2018 has in store.

Online giving days and events like #GivingTuesday are adding hundreds of millions of fundraising dollars to nonprofits every year. And this trend shows no signs of slowing any time soon.

So it makes sense that nonprofits would be feverishly trying to find the best, most significant dates in their calendars to launch an inaugural online giving day. Or maybe improve a long-standing giving day.

But maybe the organizational calendar is the wrong place to look for the right date for your giving day? Instead, shouldn't we be asking our donors - individually, in some cases - which date makes the most sense to them?

Have a look at this astonishing online-ambassador fundraising event conducted by Marquette University...

The $1 million Challenge launched in 2016 when Marquette alumnus Lemonis offered up a $300,000 match to spur giving at all levels. Using his enormous social media clout, Lemonis led the charge in tandem with the Marquette development team to raise more than $1 million, including Lemonis' matching gift.

Lemonis and Marquette teamed up again in 2017, this time on a $1.5 million matching gift from Lemonis. The result? An additional $1.7 million raised in addition to Lemonis' match for a total of $3.2 million.

Major Donor Online Ambassadors

The key to successful campaigns like Marquette's giving challenges with Marcus Lemonis is in finding your online ambassadors who also have major gift capacity. And they are out there. Right now Groundwork Digital is combining influencer screening with wealth screening to single out the big-time social media users with the capacity to give transformational gifts.

But finding these large-gift-donor ambassadors is only part of the process. Next, work with gift officers and prospect development to enhance solicitation strategies with the newfound digital data on prospects. This step includes merging gift officer knowledge with donor info in the database plus the psychographic info pulled from the social listening data (the data that came about via the influencer scan).

The goal is uncovering digital campaign concepts that match important aspects of a major gift prospect or donor's life. Birthdays, anniversaries, graduations - any life event could be leveraged to build an online campaign that has deep personal meaning to the donor or prospect. And that deep personal meaning translates into fervent online ambassador activity from the major gift donor or prospect.

This major-donor-centered digital campaign could be short and intense like a 24-hour giving day or it could be longer duration, like a crowdfunding campaign. Regardless of the specific parameters, building digital fundraising events around a personal milestone or cause of a major donor can both lead to new major gift prospects from the donor's network and a significant boost in small-gift giving in support of the campaign.

How to Build Digital Campaigns Around Major Donor Ambassadors

For a quick recap, here is how Groundwork Digital works with clients to develop major-donor-centered digital campaigns:

Conduct a social media influence screening for your entire database of donors. (In addition to uncovering major donor ambassadors, you can use the larger group of annual fund influencers to build a comprehensive online ambassador program to assist fundraising and communications at all levels)

Segment your influencers based on existing wealth data or conduct a wealth screening on the list of those with significant influence. (Klout scores of 50+, for example, would indicate significant influence)

Meet with gift officers and prospect development to merge existing knowledge with new data from social media and online sources to create enhanced, hyper-targeted solicitation strategies.

Leverage digital campaign opportunities as part of your ask to unlock big gifts from these digitally savvy donors.

To be clear, the traditional online giving day is a tremendously effective fundraising and marketing tool for your organization. The exposure and excitement around broad-based giving days rapidly grow an nonprofit's culture of philanthropy adding new donors and enthusiasm to a development program.

In addition to the traditional giving day model, consider expanding your digital fundraising by rethinking the giving day and adding a number of major-donor-ambassador-led campaigns throughout the calendar.

Are you interested in finding digitally active major donors and prospects and working with them to launch huge online campaigns in 2018? Groundwork Digital is helping multiple clients do exactly that right now. Click here to send us your email and we'll be in touch on how we can help your organization rethink the giving day in the new year and beyond.

Did your nonprofit reap the benefits of this enormous, mostly online giving event? If not - or even if you did, but want to see bigger numbers next year - check out the following three tips to help exponentially expand #GivingTuesday (or any online giving day).

Produce more video

No other form of content drives fundraising like video. A 2013 Google study found that 57 percent of donors will give to a nonprofit after watching a video from a nonprofit. If that staggering statistic is even remotely accurate, you should probably be producing more video regardless of how much video you're currently producing.

And it doesn't have to be perfectly polished video. In fact, studies are showing that "authentic" or "amateur" videos perform better in terms of securing gifts.

Video stewardship platform ThankView allows its clients to quickly produce donor thank you videos after a donor makes a pledge over the phone by either using a webcam to record a thank message from the caller (immediately after they hang up) or uploading a more produced video. The results clearly show donors favor the lower quality webcam videos. According to the ThankView stats, webcam videos lead to donors clicking on "Give Now" buttons in emails that feature the webcam videos 15 percent of the time. That click through rate drops to 10 percent when the email includes the more fully produced, uploaded videos.

The lesson? Amazing, high quality video will always have its place. But don't avoid producing and sharing lower quality video that might be shot with a smart phone or webcam. Ultimately, more video attracts more donors and results in more gifts given.

Also - don't neglect Facebook Live. The Facebook algorithms reward Live videos more than any other form of non-promoted content. Facebook Live requires a well conceived and coordinated effort, but the views are worth it. Need some tips for producing a donor-grabbing Facebook Live? Check out our free webinar here.

Find and Empower Your Online Ambassadors

Emails from online ambassadors are 312 times more effective at securing a gift than the otherwise identical email sent with the organization as the "sender." (Blackbaud, 2015) Especially for those under 40, our peers heavily influence our philanthropy.

But it's not as easy as it sounds.

First, you have to find your influencers. If you have an email list of any size whatsoever (think 5,000+ donors) it's worth it to use a vendor to help you identify your influencers. (Groundwork offers this service along with many others) A review of ScaleFunder giving days has found that the average online ambassador brings in $125 during an online giving day. Similarly, Groundwork has witnessed major donor ambassadors raise more than $60,000 in a single day. (Not to mention a bundle of new major donor prospects) Most ambassador identification technology is under $10,000, making the ROI incredible.

Once you find your ambassadors, now you need a clever engagement plan. Leveraging ambassador-friendly events is one sure-fire way to increase participation in the program. Online giving days are a great example of events that perfectly fit the peer-to-peer model. So are alumni reunions, #GivingTuesday, national awareness days ...anything influencers might naturally be talking about online. Find the event that matches your mission and invite ambassadors to join your volunteer social media sharing program around that event.

Then, get out of the way and let your online ambassadors drive the fundraising and communications activity. Only interject to offer suggested posts. And ALWAYS be ready to recognize and thank your ambassadors for their service! Increasingly, we're seeing ambassadors encouraged to continue sharing the more they are thanked for their digital advocacy.

Build or Buy a Great Online Giving Platform

Online fundraising is two equal parts strategy and technology. You can have great tech, but with no strategy driving donors to that technology you'll find limited success. Similarly, putting a massive effort behind marketing with a giving tool that barely functions and inspires zero trust is a little like the Fyre Festival - all hype and no substance.

Bad online giving day technology is a little like the food at Fyre Festival - all hype and no substance.

Invest in technology and strategy, build a great content marketing strategy, then find and empower your online ambassadors. It's a simple template that requires smart execution. Do all three and you'll have your biggest #GivingTuesday ever in 2018!

Ask us how to build a record-breaking #GivingTuesday or online giving day by clicking here.

57 percent of everyone who watches an online video produced by a nonprofit will go on to give to that nonprofit. (Google, 2013)

Keep that in mind, then go look at the number of views you have on some of your strongest Facebook or YouTube videos. And imagine 60 percent of those views becoming donors. Technically, that should be the case.

If only it were that easy ...or maybe it is?

The following are three tips to build a video-driven content strategy that leads to your organization's strongest ever end-of-calendar-year fundraising push.

Facebook Live - do it and do it often in December

Launch an end-of-year Facebook Live telethon. On New Year's Eve or the week before, invite your best supporters who are also digitally active (your online ambassadors) to a special end-of-year party. Be sure there are plenty of food, drinks, and entertainment ...and an experienced Facebook Live crew.

During this event, conduct several interviews with attendees and have them talk about why they gave back to your organization in the previous year and why they will continue giving in the new year. You might also interview a person or two who has been positively impacted by your mission. This could be a student, a patient, or a dog-in-waiting to be rescued ...you get the idea.

To increase the audience for your Facebook Live, make sure everyone you're interviewing shared the Facebook Live with their friends and family as soon as you go live.

And of course, throughout the Facebook Live event, be sure to frequently remind donors they "can give to support your mission by clicking 'donate now' in the Facebook post.

You might have heard from various digital experts that lower quality, more authentic video is more effective for fundraising.

At least in some cases, that's true.

According to Thankview, lower-quality, webcam-recorded videos are watched to completion 61 percent of the time, while higher-quality, uploaded videos are watched to completion only 47 percent of the time. More importantly, webcam-recorded videos lead to call-to-action clickthroughs on an email link 15 percent of the time, while uploaded videos only lead to CTA clickthroughs 10 percent of the time.

If you're sending 10,000 emails, that's an extra 500 people who go to your gift form from the lower-quality video.

That's not to say high quality video doesn't have it's place. (Wait until you see what Groundwork is doing with virtual reality and major donors) But we should never avoid sharing videos with our donors, because we feel the quality is unbecoming of our mission. Can you see the video? Can you hear the video? If you answer "yes" to both and the message is on point, then share that video with your donors and prospects. Especially via year-end appeals. This approach will lead to more video messaging and, ultimately, more gifts.

Sell virtual seats to your holiday season gala

If you've experienced virtual reality, then you are aware of the medium's transformative power. VR can place a person in a different time and space while giving them an emotional experience similar to being present (in the literal sense).

Imagine using this technology to democratize your high-priced, end-of-year donor galas. Of course, nothing beats the real thing - actually being there - but for $50, a donor can experience the event virtually as opposed to paying $5,000 for a table. Access to watching the speakers, hearing the musicians, enjoying the celebrity keynotes... can all take place from the comfort of home and at a more approachable price point. This gives the annual fund donors unique access to high-end experiences without cheapening the experience for large gift donors, because the large gift donors still have the exclusive benefit of literally being there.

This tactic could also be used as a leadership annual giving tool by moving the $50 up to $500. Especially if you're concerned about cheapening the high-price live gala experience.

Using VR to widen the reach of a gala could be done through Facebook Live or could be recorded and edited for later use. For example, gift officers could carry VR headsets with them to donor visits and allow those who couldn't attend in person to watch the next best thing.

Is your development operation ready to transform your fundraising outcomes with video? Groundwork Digital builds sophisticated digital strategies and produces award-winning videos for clients. Ask us about it by clicking here and completing our contact form.

“Crowdfunding?! Are you crazy?! Donors have their plans set for how they give at EOY! We’d only get new donors that don’t renew!”

Nonprofit fundraisers have a love/hate relationship with crowdfunding. But let’s take a step back and look at crowdfunding as a component to a robust, multi-channel, end-of-calendar-year campaign.

In this post we'll break down a multi-channel EOY strategy that includes:

Solicitations built on a crowdfunding backbone to appeal to unique donor interests while still filling the general fund coffers

Targeted email strategy to get donors to click

Peer-to-peer or "online ambassadors"

Facebook Ads to expand your EOY campaign's reach to new audiences

Create multiple crowdfunding pages that align with your end of year priorities.

Crowdfunding projects are specific & targeted, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be unrestricted. Dig into what your unrestricted funds do. Say there are 3 main priorities of the fund - create a page for each one! Tell stories of how those priorities have impacted lives of those you serve. Then you get the specificity and transparency of crowdfunding, and an opportunity for your donors to show you the unique reasons they give and why they care.

Once you’ve created those pages…how do you get donors there? We can rely on digital channels for the execution as well.

Create a segmented email plan directing donors to crowdfunding pages.

Donors prefer short emails. Email is no longer the place to tell your story, but a place to incite an action. So how do we convince the donor to give? Those crowdfunding pages you just created!

This page set up give you the room to tell your story in an easy to consume, visual manner. With your unique stories broken out in different pages, you already have the content needed for email. Use the most compelling information in the email in order to inspire the click to the page to learn more. Then segment your donor list and send the individuals to just one of the pages you’ve created.

Identify ambassadors.

Today's fundraising will always be stronger with a peer-to-peer component. Although EOCY projects are more institutional, make sure you have real people champion this project. Consider using really active donors or volunteers. If you have the budget - use a social listening tool to find people who really care about your mission! The best ambassador is one who has supported you in the past and has strong online influence - via social media or good email contacts. Email from the ambassadors is a critical channel alongside your institutional email.

Be active on social media! But don’t rely on organic reach.

Your donors (and potential donors) are on social. Hopefully many of them follow you! But even those who follow you may not see all your posts, depending on their history of engagement with your page. Facebook ads will ensure more people see your posts. At a minimum, consider ads that go out to those who you are already emailing. The ads will act as a marketing reminder to those who have already received your email. If you’re looking to expand your networks, consider Custom Audiences.

Crowdfunding is more than the reactive campaigns, the restricted campaigns, the campaigns that only bring in mom, dad, and grandma donors of the project teams; it is a structure of giving that provides the story behind the gift that today's donors demand.

We’re at a point where there are multiple digital channels for your fundraising office can leverage. For your EOY campaigns, make sure you’re taking full advantage of all of the digital channels at your fingertips!

Interested in a targeted multi-digital-channel strategy for your EOCY or other upcoming campaigns? Contact us at info@groundworkdigital.com.

Emails sent from online ambassadors perform 312 times better than the exact same email that is sent with the institution as the sender.

Seriously, this 2015 Blackbaud study found ambassador-sent emails convert 25 percent of the time, while the same email sent from the institution converts .08 percent of the time. It almost makes you wonder if we should bother sending e-solicitations from anyone but online ambassadors?

With that in mind, below are three tips for incorporating ambassadors, influencers, and advocates to close out the 2017 calendar year

Set up ambassadors with personal online campaigns

First things first, you need to identify and engage a strong group of online ambassadors. (Online ambassadors are your digitally-focused, social media-active volunteer advocates). Use technology to do this. The cost is almost always $10,000 or less (donor list size dependent) and the return is typically many factors of X above the investment. Our clients are finding Attentive.ly is an effective platform for this work.

You also need an engagement plan for getting the ambassadors on board and energized.

Use video, email, webinars, and live boot camps to fire up this core base of online supporters. Then, connect them to targeted online fundraising campaigns and task them with raising awareness. Either do this en masse or individually, depending on the ambassador (specifics coming up in the next section)

Make it easy to donate a holiday gift list

Donating a person's birthday is quickly catching on as a hot trend in online fundraising. And Facebook is one of those platforms leading the charge.

The concept is worth considering near the holiday season. "For this Christmas season, please donate to my favorite charity in lieu of gifts..." or "With the new year approaching, I want to be sure this important cause has the funds to advance our goals in 2018, so I'm giving my gift before December 31st."

Just like with any fundraising walk or run, be sure you have good technology that allows each donor to easily create their own personal, donation-driving giving pages.

And be sure you include major donors in this strategy. Finding online ambassadors with major gift potential can lead to campaigns like this one from Marquette: (click here for the story) This is a highly individualized approach to online ambassador fundraising and will be your most lucrative peer-to-peer campaigns when done right.

Overlay social listening on your donor database to learn more about what drives you most capable donors online. Then build a cultivation and solicitation strategy with this new, digitally-acquired information at the forefront. For those major donor prospects whose online behavior profiles suggest a December campaign might be of extra significance to them, consider working with them to offer up a match or challenge that will lead to big gifts at every level to close out the year.

“With the new year approaching, I want to be sure this important cause has the funds to advance our goals in 2018, so I’m giving my gift before December 31st.”



Thanksgiving hashtag drives

#Tweetsgiving still reigns as one of the best examples of a hashtag-based fundraising campaign. In 2008, Epic Change got its start as an organization through a brilliant hashtag campaign. With the Thanksgiving holiday approaching, the nascent Epic Change team asked supporters to post tweets stating why the Twitter user is thankful, using the hashtag "#Tweetsgiving."

The campaign went viral with many thousands of Twitter users jumping in on the action. Periodically, a group of ambassadors and Epic Change members would insert tweets with a link to their fundraising page to build a school in Tanzania. Within a few short days, the group raised more than $10,000, had enough to build the school, and laid the groundwork for the Epic Change organization.

The #Tweetsgiving hashtag campaign raised more than $10,000 over Thanksgiving 2008 to build a new school in Tanzania.

As this holiday season approaches, consider creating a hashtag to unite your followers in conversation. Or, "hijack" an existing hashtag related to your mission. Using the #GivingTuesday tag, is a widely-known example, although finding something more directly related to your cause, such as "#CleanEnergy," "#EndGunViolence," or "#AdoptaPet" can add thousands of new viewers to your message and donors to your database.

Facebook Live is a powerful tool that can instantly drive thousands of attentive viewers to your organization’s mission and message …when it is done well. Content, the right equipment, an energetic host – there are many factors to producing a game-changing Facebook Live event.

Below is Groundwork Digital's webinar, produced in partnership with Mighteor, that outlines how Facebook Live can be used to drive huge results for online fundraising campaigns. Enjoy!

Facebook Live is a powerful tool that can instantly drive thousands of attentive viewers to your organization’s mission and message …when it is done well. Content, the right equipment, an energetic host – there are many factors to producing a game-changing Facebook Live event.

Join Groundwork Digital and Mighteor for a FREE “Facebook Live for Nonprofits” webinar on Wednesday, September 27 at 3pm ET/noon PT. Click here to sign up.